The first of the displaced people to return to their homes in Curvarado, north Colombia found the forests they had known cut down, the rivers and streams diverted and the native wildlife long gone. It was a desert, they say – not of sand but of African-palm and cattle ranches.
Source: In These Times
In the late 1990s, in one of many chapters in the Colombian government’s decades-old dirty war with leftist guerrillas, more than 15,000 people in the northern region of Curvaradó were forced from their land. First came the army, they recall. And they told us to leave. ‘Don’t be afraid of us,’ the soldiers said. ‘Be afraid of those that follow us.’
Those that followed were las mocha cabezas—the beheaders—paramilitary death squads fighting as the military’s proxies. Thousands fled their massacres, bombardments and executions.
Peace talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government began last month with a press conference marked by fiery rhetoric from the Marxist guerrillas which was met by blunt responses from the government. The conference was a timely reminder of the scale of the challenge ahead.
The impromptu motorcade set off as soon as news of Hugo Chavez’s crushing election victory on Sunday, October 7th reached the town of Sabaneta, Venezuela, the president’s hometown.
Jesus Emilio Tuberquia’s life is at risk every time he leaves his home. As the legal representative and a founding member of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in northern Colombia, he suffers constant death threats and has survived several attempts on his life. Here he talks about the Colombian state's war on his community.
In early March over a thousand environmentalists and indigenous activists marched 700 kilometers from Ecuador’s southern Amazon region to the capital city of Quito. The activists mobilized to oppose plans for an open-pit copper mine they say will ravage their communities.
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